


A Girl's Name

by Caseyrocksmore



Series: A Great Man (Maybe Even a Good One) [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gender disphoria, His Last Vow Spoilers, M/M, Mentions of Mental Illness, Trans Character, Trans Male Character, Trans Sherlock, Transphobia, Trigger warning: allusion to rape, mentions of drug use, noncon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-21
Updated: 2014-01-21
Packaged: 2018-01-09 12:05:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1145782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Caseyrocksmore/pseuds/Caseyrocksmore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He could leave John with a piece of himself. He could give John a secret. He could come clean about the one other thing he hadn't told his best friend, the thing that didn't matter to anyone but Sherlock now.</p><p>"Sherlock is actually a girl's name."</p><p>(HLV spoilers)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Girl's Name

**Author's Note:**

> This didn't quite turn out how I wanted it to, and I'm not sure if I did the subject matter justice, but this is the finished product. I am generally happy with it now,after much deliberation, I've decided to post this as it stands: five tiny snapshots into the life of William Sherlock Scott Holmes.

v.

"Since it's unlikely we'll ever meet again, I might as well say it now."

John watched him expectantly, shoulders tensed, waiting. While Mycroft must have a contingency plan-- Sherlock had no doubt that his brother had prepared an escape route from whatever horror show he was about to fly into-- things often went wrong. This could be the last time he ever saw John face to face.

Sherlock, therefore, had two options: tell John how he felt and turn his life upside down with the expectation of never seeing him again, or make a joke of it. No, there was a third option. He could leave John with a piece of himself. He could give John a secret. He could come clean about the one _other_ thing he hadn't told his best friend, the thing that didn't matter to anyone but Sherlock now.

John was waiting for a confession, or instructions, maybe. He was waiting for his world to be tipped on its side again, as Sherlock had done to him in the restaurant. Instead, what he got was an admission:

"Sherlock is actually a girl's name."

 

iv.

"That was very compassionate of you," John said, sounding surprised. Sherlock didn't even bother looking up from his microscope; he had the dumbfounded look on John's face memorized from the last time he'd done something kind unprompted.

"What was?" he asked, trying, not for the first time that morning, to adopt an unaffected tone of voice. It was harder than he might've anticipated.

"You know. Telling off Lestrade, when he... called the victim a bloke. His husband really appreciated it."

Sherlock bristled, but managed not to tighten his fingers on the delicate dial as he increased magnification. " _Her_ husband."

"Yes, right. Her husband."

Earlier that morning Lestrade had texted him with the promise of a good puzzle, only for Sherlock to arrive and ascertain the killer's identity in under five minutes. He had felt the tendrils of unease wrapping around his limbs from the moment he approached the body, but kept the feelings at bay by explaining the details of the case to a mystified Lestrade.

"...and that is why it is obvious, Detective Inspector, that the killer is the woman's cleaning lady. It's all there, under her fingernails and on her handbag."

Sherlock finished his explanation and looked up at Lestrade with his usual confident smirk only to see the Detective Inspector wearing a similar expression of smugness.

"Did I miss something?" he asked, knowing full well that he hadn't.

"Well, yeah," Lestrade answered, crossing his arms and pausing just long enough to bask in the thought that he knew something Sherlock didn't. "That the victim's not _really_ a woman."

Sherlock stood from his crouch over the body slowly, keeping eye contact with the DI until he once again towered over him. He then spared a glance at John, who, despite steadying the victim's grieving widower, was craning his neck to get a closer look at the body. A hard lump formed in Sherlock's throat, but he swallowed past it.

"I beg to differ. Fat distribution and outward appearance indicate hormone replacement therapy for at least the last ten years, if not longer. She underwent breast augmentation in her early twenties, and had her gender legally changed to female on her identification shortly thereafter." Sherlock tossed the wallet he had removed from the victim's purse to Lestrade, who caught it deftly. "This _woman_ has been murdered, and you choose to focus on a tiny facet of her life with no impact whatsoever on catching her killer. The next time you decide to embarrass yourself and disrespect a murder victim by acting transmisogynistic, please don't do so in my presence."

Sherlock whirled on John and the victim's husband, who stood slack-jawed in the doorway.

"I apologize for the DI's behaviour. Your wife did not deserve to be outed in such a disrespectful manner, nor do you deserve this kind of flippancy in regards to your wife's case."

And then he was gone, with a swish of his long coat, his jaw twitching with unexpected anger. He was used to the comments, the stares, the misunderstandings. He was usually careful not to let it get to him. But this one had set him off. The vaguely disgusted look on Lestrade's face, his smugness at having figured out the victim's secret... It just rubbed him raw under the skin, an old wound reopened.

Later, in Bart's, with John standing over him, the whole episode felt like an overreaction of sorts. It was out of character; at least, it was out of character for the man he had built himself up to be. Of course John would bring it up. Sherlock hadn't been looking forward to the conversation, but he knew it would happen sometime-- granted, it didn't particularly matter anymore, considering John was living with Mary, preparing to enter a new phase in his life that wouldn't include Sherlock the same way it once had.

"Was I not supposed to defend the victim?"

Sherlock finally looked up from his microscope, only to see John wearing the quiet, fond smile he reserved for when Sherlock said something amusingly awkward, though _his heart was in the right place_ , or something equally ridiculous.

"Of course you were. I'm sure she would have wanted you solving her case."

"Her case was easy. The biggest obstacle to finding her killer would have been social stigma in the police force, where transphobia is rampant. Lestrade would have wasted valuable time trying to connect her gender identity to her murder, possibly as motive, when I'm almost certain she wasn't out to her cleaning staff." Sherlock turned back to the microscope.

"Right. Okay. I just wanted you to know that."

The door swung shut softly behind John as he left the lab, and the tension drained from Sherlock with the sound. John hadn't put the pieces together.

 

iii.

At the start, Sherlock treated it as a new sort of game. Living with a doctor was a new and interesting challenge. John Watson was astute, intelligent, and _fascinating_. Sherlock had no doubt that John would figure it out, if given the time. He would not aid him, would not give hints. He wondered how long it would take.

Months passed, cases were solved, and still... Nothing. At first, he thought John was attempting to be polite. That he had figured it out and kept it to himself. He felt secure in the knowledge that it really was "all fine" with John Watson, so he stopped being so secretive in his own home for the first time in years.

He began to sleep naked again. He went to Buckingham Palace dressed only in a sheet.

"Get off my sheet!"

"Or what?"

"Or I'll just walk away."

"I'll let you."

The threat was empty on Mycroft's side, but not on Sherlock's. He had given up caring about what people thought about him, after Victor. Some anonymous minion of Mycroft's seeing him naked didn't scare him, Mycroft seeing him naked wasn't anything new, and John... It was all fine, according to John.

But then, "Boys, please. Not here."

The way he said it, with amusement and fondness, mild embarrassment. It was then that Sherlock realized that John wasn't keeping mum out of some sort of obligatory nicety. He really didn't know.

Even afterward, when John was preoccupied with what Mycroft meant with his quip about sex alarming him-- which it most certainly did not-- Sherlock was recalculating everything he knew about their relationship. John had seen his chest, his scars, when stitching up glancing knife wounds on his ribs. He had seen the prescription for testosterone he kept on his dresser, in plain sight, when dragging Sherlock into his bed. Sherlock had even left his packer on the bathroom floor when he was too exhausted after a case to do anything else with it.

How could he not know? Unless he was being deliberately blind, he had to have suspicions at least. But no. John was a good doctor and an excellent companion, but a detective he was not.

Sherlock left the room to dress quickly in the clothes brought for him, but felt conspicuously _more_ naked when he was once again seated next to John than he had wrapped only in his bed sheet. The lightheartedness of their previous interaction had been altered; Sherlock wondered if John had noticed. He wasn't as observant as Sherlock had thought, but Sherlock felt the change in tension as one feels a sudden drop in temperature-- sudden and unquestionable-- and felt that surely John had felt the same chill running down his own spine.

"The smoking. How did you know?"

"The evidence is right under your nose, John. As ever you see but do not observe." Sherlock was projecting again; but gradually, the tension had lifted as John found his footing at the base of Admire Sherlock Mountain.

"Observe what?" he asked, clearly ready to be awed.

Sherlock put his hand inside his coat and pulled out-- "The ashtray," his words clipped but his eyes smiling as the small glass object was revealed. John's eyes lit up with amusement and wonder (that Sherlock had remembered his joke?), and Sherlock hoped he could keep that look on John's face forever. He never wanted something so trivial as his genitalia to come between them. Not when John had no interest in him, as Victor had.

He would not allow there to be so close a call ever again.

 

ii.

  
"Thought you might be here."

Sherlock startled, looking up from where he had been writing in his Chemistry textbook, absently correcting the mistakes it was riddled with. Sitting on the highest bleacher beside the pool, he was an anonymous face in the crowd of parents and siblings watching a swimming lesson.

"Victor," he said, looking up at his roommate with the owl-eyed look Victor tended to call 'endearing.' "I wasn't expecting you."

"Who were you expecting? The Queen?" Victor laughed and sat down next to Sherlock, pulling from a take-away bag a damp cardboard box of lo mein, a peace-offering."You haven't eaten in days, so either you polish this off or I force it down your throat, ta?"

He accepted the box sheepishly, along with a fork Victor had obviously procured from the university's cafeteria. Sherlock despised chopsticks, found them difficult and unnecessary. Victor had laughed the first time, but always remembered the forks when they ate Chinese.

Sherlock began to pick at the lukewarm noodles, feeling the stirring of hunger despite the coarse smell of chlorine that had already sunk into his skin. The pool had become a bolthole of sorts in the recent months, when the opium failed to do its part in calming him. Victor knew that. Then again, Victor knew  _everything._

After one bite, Sherlock began to anxiously stuff his face. Sometimes he forgot to eat honestly, sometimes he used hunger as a self-imposed punishment for his own stupidity. He wasn't sure which situation this was, but he could rarely refuse anything Victor asked of him. He was his only friend, after all.

"Listen, I know I reacted badly," Victor began once Sherlock's mouth was full. "I said some things that were... Cruel. But that's just how we are, Sherlock. You know how we are."

Victor liked to compare them to each other. Lack of empathy, disregard of social conventions, taking pleasure in the misfortune of others; that was all Victor, the spoiled rich boy with access to illicit drugs. Sherlock couldn't have been paired with a better roommate, or a worse one. He had been unconsciously mirroring him for months, picking up his habits. Victor was a disease, and Sherlock... Sherlock was infected.

He shrugged. "I already deleted it." A lie told through a mouthful of cheap Chinese food. But oh, how he wished he could just delete it. If he could delete all the bad feelings, the wrongness, the ache in his bones they called disphoria... Maybe he wouldn't need the drugs to compensate.

He tried once, deleting it. But then he had made the mistake of attempting to use a urinal, only to panic when-- well. His frantic trip to the nurse put him in the psych ward, and a phone call had been made to Mummy. He hated worrying her more than he had to, hated making her feel like all her hard work with him had been for nothing. He was well-adjusted, really. For the most part.

Victor's soft smile grew into a horrific gash across his face, turning handsome into monstrous. "You deleted it? Everything I said? That I... Everything that I did?"

Sherlock had once thought him beautiful, his mouth made for feather-light kisses when the high was just starting to wear off, his hands the perfect shape to fit Sherlock's hips, to cup his face. Now all he saw was the flash of distrust ("You tricked me!") at Sherlock's deception ("You unnatural creature!") and his hands holding him down ("I'll show you a man!") putting bruises on pale skin ("Fuck, just like that--") and pulling blind panic from the depths of his soul, where he still thought he was alright--

"Yes. I deleted it all. No use in keeping it." He kept his voice even, shovelled in another forkful of soggy, overcooked noodles that tasted like ash and the carpet fibres he'd had to pull out of his teeth in the morning.

"Great. Yeah. Perfect." Victor put an arm around Sherlock jovially, relaxing against the cold metal bleachers that were biting into Sherlock's skin. He kept his eyes on the preadolescent boys practicing their breaststroke in the pool, paced his breathing and chewing to the rise and fall of their heads in the water. The sting of jealousy at their ability to do this, without fear, without prejudice, nipped at his earlobes like mosquitos.

"I was thinking tonight maybe we could go out, see a movie, make fun of the starlets--"

"No." Sherlock's own voice surprised him, but he knew the feeling was genuine.

"Oh come on, we'll score a little dope beforehand, chill out in the cheap-seats. You love that."

"No." He stopped eating, hunched his shoulders. "I'll be applying for a private room. If I can't get one, I'll find somewhere else--"

"Sherlock, come on. You don't mean that. You wouldn't do that."

Sherlock could feel the anger in Victor's tensed muscles, in the arm around his shoulders like a coiled snake ready to strike at a moment's notice. Victor's fingers clamped around Sherlock's upper arm involuntarily. Still, he persisted. "I'll tell them I'm not comfortable living with a closeted homosexual if you don't release me within the next four seconds."

Victor let go immediately, reared back as though he'd been stung. "I am not a homosexual!" he hissed, his face red with fury and embarrassment as he glanced around, trying to ascertain if anyone had been within hearing distance of the threat.

"You had sex with a man two nights ago."

"You. Are. Not. A. Man!"

Each word landed like a punch to the solar plexus. Sherlock couldn't help the breath sucked between his teeth, tasting of chlorine and pork and Victor's too-strong cologne. One time was excusable, since he had sprung the truth on Victor after his roommate had kissed him. One time was excusable. Two were not.

The seconds passed thickly, slowly, like molasses spreading across a horizontal surface. Victor panted, Sherlock held his breath. Victor recovered faster than Sherlock thought he might, reigning in his anger-- they were in public, with dozens of eye-witnesses should he hit Sherlock now.

"You said you deleted it."

"I lied."

"Why?"

"I thought you'd come to apologize and put things back the way they had been."

"I did!"

"But you didn't mean it."

Victor stared at him a moment longer, then shook his head. "Do whatever the hell you want, Holmes. Apply for a room change. Tell people whatever you want. It's your word on mine, and they'll never believe anyone with your psychiatric history. And you'll never, ever have a friend like me again."

"Why would I ever want a friend?" Sherlock asked, his face devoid of any emotion. Friends were useless things that amused you for a while and then hurt you. Friends were horrible, deceptive creatures that used sentiment against you. Friends always left, always betrayed.

He had no use for friends anymore. He needed drug dealers to get him his fix, he needed professors to file grades, he needed doctors to fill prescriptions. He did not need a friend.

"You'll regret this, Sherlock Holmes."

"I won't."

 

i.

"I've decided."

Mummy looked up from where she was grading geometry quizzes. Sherlock could see four things wrong on the top page alone; how she managed to teach middle schoolers with a brain like hers mystified him, still, at eleven years old.

Mycroft sat across from her, plodding away on his typewriter. Father was washing the dishes in the kitchen, but his hand stilled as his youngest son entered the room.

"On your name?" Father was the one to ask, his voice even. Having a parent who worked in the social services sector had made the transition easier, the diagnosis a smooth process, the acceptance guaranteed. Mummy tried her best, but sometimes she still slipped up. Father had never slipped up.

"Yes."

He hadn't been attending a public school in several years. Mummy got sick of explaining, of bargaining, of lying on paperwork, and finally decided that homeschooling suited Sherlock's needs better. Mycroft did the majority of his work in correspondence, since they made the move to the country, and Mummy commuted a few days a month to substitute at the nearest school. Life was as calm and normal as it could be for a family of geniuses.

Carl Powers changed everything. Sherlock had seen it all, had wanted so badly to swim with the other boys that his eyes never left the pool. He knew something that the police didn't. He was a witness with insight.

But still, he was dismissed with a, "Don't worry your pretty little head about it, honey," by the police officer with the nasty cold sore (his fiancée was cheating).

Sherlock had, for the most part, been socialized under his preferred gender. Since the age of three his parents had been using his preferred pronouns, since he was four all of his clothes were chosen with care to reflect his identity.

At the age of eleven, leaving his hair to grow out just a little too much had gotten him misgendered. He was starting puberty, filling out in ways he didn't want. He was pretty. He wasn't taken seriously by an officer of the law. That was the last straw.

He went home and had his mother cut his unruly curls down nearly to the scalp, pouring over the baby book his parents had bought for naming Mycroft (they'd made up their own names anyway; the thing was useless).

"What have you decided on, then?" Mycroft asked impatiently. He was always impatient, always insufferable. Sherlock suspected OCD.

"William Sherlock Scott Holmes," he said, and his mother made a sound of joy that she couldn't quite contain. They had spent months deciding to name him Sherlock when he'd been born; they had been worried about it sounding masculine. A blessing in disguise.

"You're keeping the Sherlock," Mummy said excitedly, grinning. "William. Billy. I think I can get used to--"

"Not Billy!" Sherlock looked and sounded horrified. "I'm going to go by my middle name, of course. By Sherlock. On paperwork, William and Scott look undeniably male gendered. Sherlock could go either way. Once I've started taking hormones, it won't be under any scrutiny, and..." He paused, biting on his lip. "And I like the name you gave me. Even if it is a girl's name."

"Oh Sherlock," Mummy murmured, pushing away from the table and gathering her youngest son in her arms. "You are so, so special." She crouched down to his height and looked at him directly. She had always been a no-nonsense sort of woman. "Sherlock was never a girl's name. It's your name."

 

v.

John looked away, a smile breaking across his face. Sherlock couldn't help but gently laugh as well, as John cracked up so magnificently.

"It's not," he said breathlessly, still smiling as broadly as Sherlock had ever seen him. His smile, not unlike the one they'd shared in the cab on the way home from Buckingham Palace, lit up Sherlock's gloomy future, a beacon in the darkness that had been consuming him for three long years.

He could still put a smile in John Watson's face. That was all that mattered.

"It was worth a try."

"We're not naming our daughter after you."

"I think I can live with that."

Sherlock looked into John's eyes and saw the crinkles of a smile at its corners, but also-- understanding. Clear, unquestionable, understanding. Sherlock's breath caught in his throat. Perhaps John had known all along, perhaps it had only clicked recently; either way, he knew, and it hadn't changed anything at all.

Sherlock was never a girl's name, because Sherlock had never been a girl.


End file.
